Most of us don't have to worry about being incorrectly quoted because no one really cares
what we say, no matter how many followers we have on Twitter.
But when you're famous, fake quotes become a defining part of your image — true or
not.
So let's figure out who actually said what, once and for all.
"We are not amused."
Even though we think of Queen Victoria as a scowling, old lady dressed in black, she
probably never actually said "we are not amused."
While the rumor has been going around forever — even while she was alive — no one seems
to know exactly when she said it.
According to the Radio Times, she said it when a servant told a saucy story.
Another tale says it was uttered after a performance of HMS Pinafore.
Yet another says she voiced her opinion when a whole table was laughing at something she
didn't find funny.
But, Queen V was happier than she looked.
The Christian Science Monitor reported that Lady Salisbury claimed Queen Victoria laughed
too much.
Apparently, she was amused.
"England and America are two countries divided by a common language."
Famous for his witty repartee, there's a possibility author George Bernard Shaw said something
similar to this.
In the notes of his 1906 play Caesar and Cleopatra, he wrote,
"We have men of exactly the same stock, and speaking the same language, growing in Great
Britain, in Ireland, and in America.
The result is three of the most distinctly marked nationalities under the sun."
It's close, but there's still no evidence Shaw ever said the exact phrase.
It's actually possible Oscar Wilde is the true originator of this phrase, since in one
of his short stories the narrator describes a character like this:
"She was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything
in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."
"The ends justify the means."
You could read the whole of Niccolo Machiavelli's most famous work The Prince, and never find
this line.
And it's not in any of his other works, either.
In Chapter 18 of The Prince, he sort of alludes to this theory, with,
"Let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always
be considered honest."
But even if Machiavelli had written this exact quote, he probably wouldn't have meant it.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, there's a good chance the whole book was satire.
"Well-behaved women rarely make history."
There's a good chance you already saw this quote today, possibly even on a wall sticker.
But Marilyn Monroe never said it.
Neither did Eleanor Roosevelt, or Anne Boleyn, or anyone you've ever heard of.
According to the New York Times, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote a version of this in an article
in 1976, though the phrasing was slightly different: "Well-behaved women seldom make
history."
There's no telling who this quote might be attributed to next.
"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
According to The Phrase Finder, this statement was originally attributed to US Air Force
aerospace engineer Captain Edward A. Murphy, who hated the people he was working with,
noting that if they could possibly do something wrong, they would.
The quote first showed up in print in 1952, when the book, The Making of a Scientist,
quoted a physicist as stating Murphy's Law as,
"If anything can go wrong it will."
But astronaut John Glenn wrote in his 1962 memoir that "Murphy" was actually a fictitious
character made up by the U.S. Navy for educational cartoons.
Whoever came up with it, it totally nails the essence of life.
"I invented the internet."
During the runup to the 2000 Presidential election, Vice President Al Gore sat down
with Wolf Blitzer in 1999 and talked about important things he'd done.
Snopes reports that he said:
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
What he meant was that he played an important role in furthering the development of the
internet, which is absolutely true.
In fact, he's even in the Internet Hall of Fame, which is a thing that actually exists.
But his critics thought "I invented the internet" sounded a whole lot funnier, and the myth
was born.
"Be the change you wish to see in the world."
Legendary Indian political activist Gandhi said a lot of really deep stuff, but if you've
been saying this quote, you've just been repeating some rando bumper sticker maker.
But wait.
According to the New York Times, Gandhi did say,
"If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.
As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him."
Not quite as catchy.
"Elementary, my dear Watson."
Even if you've never read any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, you're
probably familiar with the detective's iconic saying, "elementary, my dear Watson!"
The only problem is, he never said it.
Snopes says that the closest Holmes comes to saying this phrase is in the short story
The Crooked Man.
He's just done an impressive deduction of how busy Dr. Watson is with his patients,
and this exchange takes place:
"'Excellent!'
I cried.
'Elementary,' he said."
Close enough?
"I cannot tell a lie.
I did cut it with my hatchet."
The first thing you probably learned about Washington was that he was our first president.
The second thing?
He was really bad at lying.
The story goes that little Georgie was playing around with a hatchet, and chopped down his
father's prized cherry tree.
When he was confronted, he said,
"I cannot tell a lie.
I did cut it with my hatchet."
But the Mount Vernon official website says this story was invented after Washington died,
by an author who wanted to cash in on his passing by writing a popular history book.
The book was a bestseller and even though he included loads of other fake stories too,
the cherry tree was the one everyone remembered.
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